Character building, but one down...

What is cooking my friends?  Plant based fair I hope!  Today as I write, I am a couple of days past the first 100miler in The Super Slam (Glasshouse 100) and I am doing my best to recover as quickly as possible!  It was by far the deepest I have had to dig in a hundo but I got the job done and the first one is in the bag.I was very prepared for this race and went into it actually nervous.  I haven't had any real kind of race nerves before an event in ages so it was kind of nice.  During the last 13weeks of training, I have worked to steer away from conventional race nutrition (gels etc) and work more on eating whole foods.  This has worked really well in training, however as I found out, in the race it was just TOO much food, TOO much of the same kind of food (dried fruit and nuts) and it made me SO sick.  Basically for about 70% of the race I felt VERY ordinary, including not being able to eat or drink anything really in the last six hours.  I don't really know how I kept moving forward!Additionally, the weather was WILD!  We had on and off rain from about 5pm which was headed by a MASSIVE electrical storm with lightning, thunder and hail to boot!  I have never run in hail so that was 'entertaining!'  The trails turned into rivers and I had wet feet for about the last 10hrs of the race but hay, that is trail running.Apart from that, the race was a character builder!  Up until about 100k, I moved from third to second and was between only five and ten minutes from the lead.  After this though, my nutritional issues and failing body got the better of me and I dropped time, as well as a place, eventually finishing in 21hrs and 17min (I think) and third position.  Congrats to Kiran and Ben for the competition throughout the day!  Given all that I went through, I was still pretty wrapped with the outcome.Many thanks to Jason, my pacer and one of my best mates!  Without him, I would have struggled even more and my finish time would have been far longer.  Tegs and the girls were fantastic crew as always and as mentioned in previous blogs, the support of Costi Farms and Chasing Vert has been amazing.  Further, to all the volunteers and race organisers, thank you for another great event!From here, the recovery process needs to be fast and efficient!  I am doing my best to fuel the body with as much clean vegan food as I can, rest, do some yoga this week and a little running from next week.  Well see what the body decides.  Aside from that, life carries on!  Blessed as always.All in all, the first instalment in The Super Slam was not pretty but I got the job done!  It has given me some added mental strength going forward and I am super pumped to see what the next couple weeks bring leading up to Nerang 100miler.  I hope your all out there chasing some adventure, loving life and keeping it real!  Much love, peace, presence and mindfulness to y'all!  Mat